So far, we all have to admit, it’s been a dark and stormy summer. Murderous tornadoes, devastating floods, fierce storms, blasts of lightning. Some might wax poetic and say there are monsters in the air.

Feels something like it might have in 1816, when the eruption of Tamboro, an Indonesian volcano, spewed ash into the atmosphere and turned 1816 into “the year without a summer.”

Killing frosts occurred in New England and Canada all summer long.

In Europe crops rotted, lacking sunlight and bogged down with too much rain. Grain prices doubled.

In India food shortages triggered a famine, leaving a weakened population vulnerable to a cholera epidemic.

Thunderstorms were everyday occurrences. “An almost perpetual rain confines us principally to the house,” wrote 18-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin that very summer. Godwin—later Mary Shelley—was on a Continental lark with her lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her half-sister, Claire Clairmont. Claire had led them to the outskirts of Geneva, where her would-be lover, the rapscallion poet Lord Byron, was testing out self-exile, accompanied by a young doctor, John Polidori, who had literary ambitions of his own.

“One night we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before beheld,” wrote Mary Godwin. “The lake was lit up . . . and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness.”

Out of that terrifying weather, two of the world’s favorite monsters were born. Polidori wrote “The Vampyre,” first vampire story in English and inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written nearly 80 years later.

And Mary Godwin dreamt up Frankenstein.

So what monster might this summer’s wild weather conjure up for future movie theaters? Not sure what it will look like, but NASA climatologist Bill Patzert has the name already.

“La Niña was strong in December, but back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing—La Nada—to constrain the jet stream,” Patzert said in a recent press release. “Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom—and the results were disastrous.”

Like Mary Shelley’s monster, “La Nada” is a force of nature, overwhelmingly powerful, other than human, unpredictable, without a conscience, devastating in effect.

-Susan Tyler Hitchcock

Susan Tyler Hitchcock is Senior Editor in the Books Division of NGS and author of “Frankenstein: A Cultural History,” published by W. W. Norton

There is a monster in the air
That will blow any human mind.
The jet streams are this monster’s lair,
To prey upon all human kind.
The winds have joined around the world
Into a massive whirling force
Fiercer than any known winds whirled,
Destroying all within its course.
The monster strikes all time, all place,
Sucking up and ripping ashred,
Hurling all into outer space.
Most of the life on Earth is dead.

Those still living are quite earthbound,
Forced to live far, far underground.

Bill Patzert

Sierra Madre, CA

July 9, 2011, 3:18 pm

Hi Marc: Slight correction. Tambora blew up in 1815, followed by the year without a summer, 1816. Fun story. Bill

Post a comment

National Geographic Voices

Researchers, conservationists, and others share stories, insights and ideas about our living planet's rapidly changing geography. More than 50,000 comments have been added to 10,000 posts. Explore the list alongside to dive deeper into some of the most popular categories of the National Geographic Society's conversation platform Voices.

Opinions are those of the blogger and/or the blogger's organization, and not necessarily those of the National Geographic Society. Posters and commenters are required to observe National Geographic's community rules and other terms of service.

Voices director: David Braun (dbraun@ngs.org)

Fighting Wildlife Crime: The Unsung Heroes

Journalist and National Geographic Fellow Bryan Christy uses investigative journalism to expose illegal wildlife trafficking around the globe. In this video he introduces a a series of interviews with the people fighting wildlife crime on the front lines.

Blog Search

Search for:

Fulbright-National Geographic

The Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship provides a unique platform for U.S. Fulbright awardees to build awareness of transnational challenges, comparing and contrasting cross-border issues. Their stories are shared on National Geographic digital platforms using a variety of digital storytelling tools, including text, photography, video, audio, graphic illustrations and/or social media. Meet the Fellows and follow their adventures across the world on the Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling blog.

Follow the links on the sidebar of any of the blog's pages for details and tips on how to apply for a Fellowship.

Photo of the 2016/2017 class of Fellows by Randall Scott.

Featured Research: Mushara Elephant Project

Caitlin O'Connell and her husband, Tim Rodwell, started the Mushara Elephant Project in Namibia 24 years ago to better understand elephant social structure, communication and health in order to apply this knowledge to improved care in captivity and ultimately to elephant conservation in the wild. O’Connell is on the faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine and CEO of the elephant-focused nonprofit, Utopia Scientific. A grantee of the National Geographic Society, she is also an award-winning author of six books about elephants. Read Caitlin's dispatches from Mushara.

Nat Geo Expedition: Rising Star

Two years after being discovered deep in a South African cave, the 1,500 fossils excavated during the Rising Star Expedition have been identified as belonging to a previously unknown early human relative that National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Lee Berger and team have named Homo naledi.

With at least 15 individuals of all ages and both sexes represented, the find adds an unprecedented amount of information to our understanding of early human evolution in Africa.

In addition, the absence of any other animal remains or large debris in the fossil chamber strongly suggests that these non-human beings intentionally deposited their dead within this cave.